To start with, if you are using POSER at all you are using a VERY LIMITED rigging system. Nothing you can do about it really. You want better result from any mesh, take into into a program with more powerful rigging tools. E-frontier still hasn't fixed the 1 parent per bone problem as of P6. (Last version I bought.) That said. Mike and Vicky 1 & 2 were more realistic looking than Posette and Dork back when they were released. No one in Poser land cared about poly count really bout then as long as what they bought worked. The Unimesh series of figures offered limited morph compatibility and the most important feature in my book, a Universal texture map. With the Unimesh line, and my Lightwave modeling skills, I can move any morph from one figure to another. Unimesh meant that my texture purchases and any texture work I did on my own would be of use on every unimesh figure. M3, V3 and A3 were then given away for free. Can't argue with that. I got almost the entire AEON line of figures from Dodger which gave me more variety. The reason I will continue to use Unimesh and support them is that I have a small fortune invested in their clothes, textures, morphs. V4 really was only made to sell new maps and morphs. DAZ had to do SOMETHING because they played the Unimesh out as well as every genre they could think off for them. Her mesh might be nicer, and knock 10K polys off compared to V3, but her incompatibility makes her worthless to me. I know there's a V4 that takes V3 maps... Blah blah. Don't really care. Mapping is only half the battle and I never had any luck with any of those commercial morph movers. What V4 offers in better posing is useless to me too. I do naked people only 1% of the time. 99% of the time I would use her, all her improved topology would be hidden when I'm working with her. I have always been a fan of the Reduced Res figures. I own every reduced res figure made. RRM2 and RRV2, as well as RRV3 and RRM3. The RRUnimesh figures come in around 24000 polys Vs Unimesh 72000. Their mapping is a little off on the back which has always made me crazy, but otherwise they are great stand in's. I think DAZ has mad a mistake straying to far from the original Unimesh. Apollo Maximus has to be one of the most beautiful meshes I've ever laid eyes on. There is not a single one of his 40,000 polygons waisted on that mesh. His default pose is MUCH better that the Unimesh "T" which give him better shoulders, with less stretching. He's a friggin' work of art. Still not going to use him all that much. No reduced Res figure to stand in for him, and can't use 99% of my stuff without jumping through hoops. He's a FAR superior model to M3 or other unimesh. But look at things from a resource point of view, and he's a whole lot more work without enough payoff. IMHO. Daz's popularity is the same as Windows Vs Linux. The reason I use Windows is not because I love it so much, it's that I'm locked in by my investment in other software. The same way I am now locked into DAZ Unimesh. Oh... I'm typing this from my Xunbutu Box, sure. But I need to run Lightwave and Poser, so I still need a Windows machine weather I like it or not. If I ever make any decent money I'm going for an 8 Core Mac Pro and 30" Monitor. Till then, I'm stuck with Windows XP. Same thing with DAZ figures. (Only I actually still like them.) They're not the best in any way... except in support. As it turns out... that is the most import way. When my graphics machine suffered a thermal meltdown recently I got stalled on a project I was almost ready to release. The Poser figure *I* always wanted. I've created my OWN Ultra lo Res Unimesh figure. I call him Reslo. The picture I've attached is Full res M3 in the foreground and Reslo in the back sporting the same bump map. P4 Renderer in P6. M3 is 72000+ polys, Reslo is under 2600! No type-o. Twenty Six Hundred Polys. Reslo uses Unimesh mapping, but even tripled he's under >5000 polygons which makes him usable as a Real Time Rendered character these days. He's actually about 1000 polys lower that the figures used in Second life!!!! This will give me a figure I can rough out animation and poses with, then replace with the Real M3 if I need to render a close up. (Or RRM3 if I don't need to be THAT close.) For the poly count of a single Naked M3 I can have almost 30 Reslos in a scene. If you do a search at Poser Pros for Reslo, you'll find some earlier versions of the figure dressed as a Cop. As soon as I get a new machine with something better than an an Intel815 graphics chipset, I'm going to finish off his morphs, versions of him for all Unimesh figures, and submit him to DAZ. I'm hoping to have versions of all the morphs included in RRM3. If DAZ doesn't see his value I can always Objaction the mesh to it's respective figures. What has always bugged me about the DAZ line and conforming clothing in general is the waist of a full nude figure just to wear a conforming outfit. Officer Reslo will use the same head, arms and hands as Reslo... and take the same Unimesh textures for them, but will be a stand alone dressed MESH. Some features I'm working on are rolled up sleeve morphs, and a short sleeve material transparency. This the direction that I think the whole 3D industry is moving. I'm going to be working on a set of Displace maps for Reslo (And consequently for all Unimesh figures.) that will provide him a lot of detail that we usually use higher res mesh and morphs for. That's how I'm going to fill in details like the ear. With displace maps. So the real answer to the topic question of "Why are DAZ High Polycount Meshes so Popular?" is that they are so well supported. Right down to my making them LORES.

mo·nop·o·ly  [muh-nop-uh-lee]
noun, plural mo·nop·o·lies.
1. exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market,
or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices